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21 September 2001

Don't advertise your weakness - Sophos Anti-Virus calls for action

Sophos, a world leader in corporate anti-virus protection, is urging all website administrators to plug the holes in their systems in the wake of the Nimda virus.

Sophos has already received thousands of calls about the Nimda virus, which spreads through email and via unsafe web servers. Download requests for Sophos's free detection and disinfection utility have been arriving at a rate of one per second. But just removing the virus is not enough - the holes which allowed it to get in need to be plugged too.

Any computer infected by Nimda will start attacking other people's web servers, and the hostile packets it sends out are easy to recognise. Because internet packets are labelled with a unique number (the IP address) which indicates which computer they came from, they can easily be traced back to identify vulnerable networks.

"Beware if your website is infected!" says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant, Sophos Anti-Virus. "This is a blatant advertisement to hackers that your server is weak - vulnerable not just to Nimda but to a direct attack. Practise safe computing, and keep your server security up to date."

Sophos researchers have developed a standalone utility which can detect and disinfect the W32/Nimda-A virus.

* Download nimda.zip (Utility and instructions, Zip file)
* Download nimdasfx.exe (Utility and instructions, self-extracting Zip file)
* Read instructions for using the utility

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